YFSLabs R&D have spent several years on various dictums. Current results are as follows. Stop clenching your teeth. Don’t hunch your shoulders. Relax into it. There is no good reason to clench your teeth. You know you do. Suppose you are opening a new jar of pickles and it is not cooperating. You clench your teeth as though it will help your upper body strength. It’s like sticking out your tongue a little. There are only two decent reasons to hunch your shoulders. If you are launching into a physical combat with an opponent you may want to become a smaller target. If you are walking into a stormy headwind the same is true. Other than that hunching your shoulders is an avoidance behavior that harms your stature. There’s an old politically incorrect line in many cultures that amounts to, if rape is inevitable lie back and enjoy it. The inevitability of stuff happening is a sword that cuts two ways. Bad stuff happens. Good stuff happens. Relax into it. Any moment now things will turn again.

This has been brewing in the brain pan for a while. My good friend Doug Nilles made a telling note about art. I’ve said repeatedly that the difference between art and fart is the letter f. Kurt Vonnegut wrote, “The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.” Considering myself to be a craftsman, not an artist, allows me to include food, craft pieces constructed from paper and glue, ikebana. Word pieces. Make something. Do something. Create a song in your head. You can take something you’ve found that you like and then amplify it and share in a moment. Something New! Something that was never there before. Just because there are no new ideas under the sun is no reason to stop working.

The campaign of Marshall Youtzy 2016 is a broad coalition of right and left. The spokesman noted: In those days, after work was finished, Ronald Reagan would have Tip O’Neill by The House for a few belts. They would kick the can around. This is how we work. We can agree to disagree. We can still get things done.

I’ve a novel idea. With the death of Scalia Obama should and will nominate; the Republicans have vowed to and will obstruct. For good or ill this will not be resolved during Obama’s term. Here’s the deal. I’d throw my hat on the table and nominate a Native American jurist, even better, a woman. Our constitution is based on theirs in many ways. Since the Rs must oppose let them chew on that in public. I’d love that circus.

Every once in a while there’s an hour or so And you sit on the far side of the rise from camp And keep an eye on the sleeping cattle down below A darkness that could cover all but seems to want to make friends With your lamp doesn’t want to go But it’s a regular dance in a small town hall with a scratchy violin And down ‘round New Mexico there’s another late night lamp With another enchanting glow The moon didn’t want to go either but he has prairie to cover And he knew the sun would get there soon enough And ruin his lesser show and chase him off anyway The sounds of the cook stove and coffee pot start talking Behind your back Pickup tires crossing the cattle guard Sand in your teeth and grounds in the coffee The sun saddles up We’ll watch him go too And me and my lamp will see another show

There may have been some residual confusion regarding “tonight we ride.” Here’s the deal. We assemble. I ride lead. My minions mount. Our dogs assemble nearby; they know we’re going. Each minion has one of our cats on saddle. The whip cracks and so we go. The moon is favorable. As we gain speed in the crisp night air we travel as one. A foolish tribe imagines they can raid our caravan and ride nearby attempting to gain control. Our dogs nip at their heels. As they draw body close each minion throws his cat onto an enemy rider to claw his neck and face. When they are brushed off they fall to the ground and one of our dogs pauses so his cat can mount his back and continue. The enemy is rather pitiful. We could sword them yet it is more efficient to beat them with the sticks we carry. Our sticks are larger than theirs. They retreat in fear, having been taught a valuable lesson. When we then establish our night camp we fire up meat. We laugh and bust each other with bad jokes. Our dogs and cats get their due. We drink the mead until the fire is nigh on dead and then retire. My dog and cat come and rest close to me in my tent. Life is good.